Office worker Seo Seok-woo is separated from his wife. Their daughter, who lives with him, wants to visit her mother for her birthday, so Seo and his daughter take the…train to Busan!!! Before they leave, anybody with even an ounce of observational skills would notice that things are starting to get out of control, but no, not this guy. Example: while driving to the train station, Seo notices that a skyscraper is literally engulfed in flames, he calmly states “Looks like something's happening.” Wow…ya think?! Once on the train, despite a riot breaking out on the platform as they leave, Seo decides the best course of action is to take a nap. He wakes up with his daughter missing and a full on zombie death metal circle pit breaking out on the train. That sounds cool, and it is...kinda, for a few minutes, but not really.
Hit or miss special effects, highly predictable story, twitchy zombies that look like they got ants in their pants, lots of people way too dumb to live, annoying kid, disjointed social commentary that distracted from the story, easily 30 minutes of talking that could have been cut (or better yet…replaced with zombie action!) mild blood, a cheerleader, zero gore, all of the zombies fully dressed, alternating fast / slow pacing, a lot of smartphone use, terrible musical score that didn't even match the events onscreen, zero interesting characters, zombie deer, stupid ending that made me want to dropkick my TV through the fucking wall.
Despite its many flaws, TRAIN TO BUSAN is still worth watching for zombie fans. The action scenes themselves (while nothing new) are still fun. I also liked that the majority of the action took place in the daytime. I’d totally be down to watch a TV show based in this film’s world…as long as they replaced the sappy, slow-moving, emotional garbage with zombies ripping out necks. And more cheerleaders.
[Not really part of the review, but as an experiment, I went back and watched the majority of the film in 2x speed with the subtitles on and it was fine. I watched the action scenes at normal speed and the talking stuff in 2x and it was more enjoyable. Hell, if you were really pressed for time, you could start the film at 11:02 minutes in. Absolutely nothing in the scenes leading up to that was worth a fuck. And then, to save a fisthole in your TV, just skip the sappy ending completely.]
Prequel - Seoul Station (2016)
Part 2 - Peninsula (2020)
